Co-operatives

I am always perpetually in thought about how to organize societies better. All I have really been able to come up with is oranizing the economy along the lines of worker's and consumer co-operatives.


These thoughts come from a reality I perceive: that the distinction between left and right economically and politically is false. Historically they both arise out of the enlightenment era and the french revolution. The right at that time did not want to seriously change societal structures (the monarchy) but agreed with the basic philosophies of the Enlightenment (first classical liberalism). The left tried to match philosophy with policy by having a revolutionary policy (but moved, unlike the right, to embrace the succesor of liberalism in the various forms of socialism).

Not much has changed.

The left was seriously set back by the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet and Maoist regimes, thankfully, as some have already said, the end of the cold war was a sort of victory for the left.

Unfortunately the left has been degraded in the generic keynesian strategies and has a lost what once their attempt at creative and revolutionary policy. Not to say the revolutionary policy is inherently good, it was this thrust of revolution that caused the Reign of Terror in post-revolutionary france and some of the dictatoral tyranny in marxist lands.

The left (and by that I mean a specific organizational politics, where philosophy meets policy) must rejuivante itself. The right has never really existed as distinct from the left, and as the left was co-opted by a beuarocratic keynesian ethos the right has been co-opted by the interests of a very specific group of businesses, specifically certain financial institutions, oil companies and large scale manufacturers.

So let us move in the direction of co-operatives. Where we own what we produce and consume, or at least have a say in how it is produced and consumed. This can severely break-down financial class positions and increase production and equity in our societies.